Topline
Disney’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever continued to top the box office charts for the fifth consecutive week by raking in an estimated $11.1 million this weekend, according to the Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, a streak that is all but certain to be broken next week with the release of James Cameron’s highly anticipated followup to 2009’s Avatar.
Martin Freeman, Florence Kasumba, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Ryan Coogler, Lupita Nyong’o and … [+]
Key Facts
Wakanda Forever, the latest superhero film in Disney’s long-running Marvel Cinematic Universe and the direct sequel to 2018’s Black Panther, has recorded total domestic box office sales of $409.8 million so far, the Hollywood Reporter added.
The Black Panther sequel is only the third movie this year to breach the $400 million mark at the box office, and later this week, it will become the second-highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office in 2022, only behind the Tom Cruise-led Top Gun: Maverick.
Universal Pictures’ Christmas action-comedy Violent Night reportedly finished second on the box office charts for the second consecutive weekend after bringing in an estimated $8.7 million this weekend.
Disney’s latest animated feature Strange World, which has been a major flop for the studio, continued its poor run and reported only $3.6 million to finish in a distant third place.
The lack of any major new release meant an overall grim weekend for the box office which only managed to gross around $39 million, making it the second worst weekend of the year, according to Deadline.
Tangent
The Darren Aronofsky-directed feature The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser, managed to rake in $360,000 at the box office despite being released only across six theaters in New York and Los Angeles. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie’s per-theater weekend average of $60,000 is the best for any movie released this year, outdoing Everything Everywhere All at Once’s $50,000 per theater. Despite middling reviews and a somber story, online interest in the film has remained strong after reports of it receiving standing ovations across the festival circuit and the internet’s adulation of Fraser, who is in the middle of a career renaissance.
What To Watch For
The coming release of Disney’s Avatar: The Way of the Water—the highly anticipated sequel to James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar—will almost certainly boost next weekend’s box office numbers. But how big an opening the Avatar sequel can score remains a question. The first Avatar is the fourth highest-grossing film of all time at the domestic box office and the highest of all time when global box office numbers are taken into account, with total worldwide earnings of $2.9 billion. The follow-up to Cameron’s technical and visual masterpiece has been several years in the making, although it is unclear if the franchise has managed to build any kind of a dedicated fanbase like Disney’s other mega properties like Star Wars and Marvel.
Key Background
The Black Panther sequel is close to snapping up the second-place spot in domestic box office sales for 2022 after its strong weekend performance reportedly left it just $1.5 million shy of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness—another Marvel release. Once it outpaces Doctor Strange’s tally, Wakanda Forever will become the most successful Marvel Cinematic Universe distributed by Disney since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame—beaten only by 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home which was distributed by Sony. Despite its success, Wakanda Forever still trails the original Black Panther which raked in $202 million on its debut weekend and ended its run with $700 million in domestic box office sales.
Further Reading
Weekend Box Office At $38M, Near 2022 Low Before ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ Soaks Up All The Air (Deadline)
Box Office: ‘Black Panther 2’ Leads Otherwise Dismal Weekend, Leaps Past $400M Domestically (The Hollywood Reporter)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/12/11/weekend-box-office-wakanda-forever-leads-for-fifth-straight-week-ahead-of-avatar-sequel-release/